After witnessing the atrocities caused by Hurricane Wilma and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, it is safe to say that anyone would jump at an opportunity to prevent that kind of damage. The problem with this proposed solution is that it would mess with our ecosystem. There are tens of thousands of organisms living in the depths of our ocean, all maintained at a delicate balance. Disrupting this balance sounds like it could have major consequences on our planet.

Even if this is implemented, it sounds extreme. For these barges to be able to respond to the appearance of a hurricane, they have to be moving quite fast. Either that or we’d have to have hundreds of them placed all over the globe. Also, who knows what stopping a hurricane would do. String theorists claim that every miniscule action can cause hugely unforeseen consequences – a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. I’m sure the effect would be a tad more drastic if we stopped a hurricane.

Ever since the 1990s and the invention of the Internet, we’ve been making progress towards a time when no one would have to leave their house for anything. We’ve progressed from letters to e-mails and from phone conversations to instant messaging. With eBay and online stores, we’ve even began to shop online.

Friendshopper takes online shopping to the next level. The concept is simple: shop with your friends online. The interface is quite intuitive as well. Once you create an account and add the bookmark they give you to your bookmark bar, you add others who’ve created accounts and you can shop away. While at an online store (www.bestbuy.com, for example), if you see something you like, you just go to the product page and click the Friendshopper bookmark. This pulls up another window with a picture and all the product’s information with the options of saving it to your items, sharing it with your friends, and doing both.

As you continue to use the site, your account builds on the online stores you use. Even if you don’t incorporate your friends, it’s a great way of keeping track of the items you’d like to buy and that items that you’ve bought. If you’d like, you can ask your friends for their opinions on products you’ve picked out as well.

So if you’re a casual shopper or someone who frequently purchases things online, this site is a great way to keep your purchases organized.

The iPhone 3GS has been selling phenomenally this past weekend. Within its first three days, Apple announced that over 1 million iPhone 3GS units have been sold. I guess that isn’t all that surprising considering that AT&T reports indicated that there have been “hundreds of thousands” reserved. In fact, approximately 12% of those who’ve purchased an iPhone 3GS this weekend claimed to be replacing their Blackberry, proving that Apple is starting to be a main competitor in the smartphone market.

However, this weekend was not flawless. Some of those who’ve purchased iPhone 3GS have been faced with longer than expected activation times. These waiting times were so severe that some continue to wait. Apple has decided to provide $30 in iTunes store credit to those who have experienced these extended wait times, considering that an activation should take a maximum of 48 hours.

In addition, the iPhone Software 3.0 was released with a ton of new features, such as cut/copy/paste and the ability to undo during text messages by shaking the phone. Overall, the response seems to be highly positive, especially regarding the spotlight search feature. Not only does it let you search through your notes and messages, but it also has the ability to search within apps. This means that you can swing over to the spotlight search and find a contact by typing in their name (first or last!)

I hope that those of you who’ve bought an iPhone 3GS are not experiencing any of the problems and I’d love for your opinions. I have a 1st generation iPhone (the one with the EDGE network) and I’ve decided not to upgrade to the 3GS but to wait and see what Apple will do next.

So although you’ll be guaranteed an iPhone 3GS, you may accrue some wait time before you can fiddle with it yourself.

Mark Bocko, professor of electrical and computer engineering and co-creator of the technology says that, “Humans can manipulate their tongue, breath, and fingers only so fast, so in theory we shouldn’t really have to measure the music many thousands of times a second like we do on a CD. As a result, I think we may have found the absolute least amount of data needed to reproduce a piece of music.”

The research team created a virtual clarinet and modeled the interaction between a clarinet player and the instrument. They modeled everything – the force of the fingertips, the breath, and even the pressure of the lips. Once this was complete, it was only a matter of letting the computer “listen” to the music and recreate it digitally.

Although the music isn’t 100% flawless, the researchers have said that it’s getting really close. The system can currently only handle a single instrument, but the researchers are vigorously moving toward multiple instruments compatibility. This means that in the near future, you could be carrying almost 1000 times as much music on the same devices you currently own. The mp3 file format will be a thing of the past and everyone can rock on 1000 times as hard.

Although we haven’t seen much differentiation between keyboards in the past few years, Econo-Keys has created a portable keyboard that stands out from the rest. On once side, it has a keyboard. On the opposite side, it sports a trackpad. It’s made to be durable and will keep out dirt and dust. However, to use the trackpad, you’re required to flip the keyboard over. This seems like it would require way too much flipping and become tiring after a short period of time.

If you are interested, Econo-Keys is selling this gadget for $146.

With WWDC starting up at first light, there are many, MANY rumors afloat as to what we’ll hear about tomorrow. John Gruber over at Daring Fireball fine-tuned his iPhone predictions. Aside from reconfirming his suspicions – twice the CPU speed and RAM, video camera capability, and the potential for a price drop in the older models – Gruber revealed that the new iPhone is under the code word: 3GS. Although it’s not that exciting of an official name and no one really knows what the “S” stands for, we’re hoping for the best and we’ll see what WWDC reveals for us tomorrow.

On June 6, 1984, Alexey Pazhitnov created a simple yet addictive game that he called Tetris. If you don’t know what tetris is, you’ve lived a very deprived childhood and I demand that you go play it for hours on end. You can find Tetris almost anywhere nowadays – on your iPhone, your Wii (Tetris Party is a WiiWare game), on your computer, and pretty much anywhere on the Internet.

In fact, I plan to pick up a copy of Tetris on my iPhone today in celebration of the glorious event. I hope everyone is as excited as I am about this.

Are you one to play MMOs? If you are, then this is the right device for you. Coming out this fall, this $129 glove can be yours. Basically, it allows you to program in commands based on touching various contact points together. It works with everything, because it’s pretty much a USB keyboard and if you’ve ever used Joy2Key, you probably already know how it works. It’s washable, comfortable, and supposedly made according to military specs.

So if you’re big on MMOs, start saving, cause this is one of those things that you’ll want to pick up.

Remember back when VHS was popular? It was a time before Blu-ray and even before DVDs. Well for those of you who do remember, you know how all the VHS rewinding devices were shaped like vintage cars? So looking at this picture, one would naturally think, “oh, a VHS rewind machine. What’s so special about that?” Fact of the matter is that this isn’t a VHS rewind machine — it’s actually a full blown computer.

Tricked out with an Atom processor and a DVI output, this vehicle is fully capable of taking care of your computing needs. Of course, the device itself isn’t for sale (I have no idea why – they’d probably make tons of money). It was designed by Kimpro and presented at the Computex trade show in Taiwan to show that as computer parts grow smaller every day, people can start putting them in anything.